Published Interface

Published Interface is a term I used (first in Refactoring) to refer to a class interface that's used outside the code base that it's defined in. As such it means more than public in Java and indeed even more than a non-internal public in C#. In my column for IEEE Software I argued that the distinction between published and public is actually more important than that between public and private.

The reason is that with a non-published interface you can change it and update the calling code since it is all within a single code base. Such things as renames can be done, and done easily with modern refactoring tools. But anything published so you can't reach the calling code needs more complicated treatment.

reposted on 03 May 2012